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| Dec 16: Aoyama, Ginza
Waking up this morning was awful. As usual, Mike yelled "Godzilla!" upon first seeing me, but it wasn't funny this time. I used to be able to count on one hand the times that heavy drinking left me with a hangover. I think those days may be gone. I got out the door at 11:00am. I planned to come back around sundown instead of staying out all day and night like I have been, so I left without my gloves or windbreaker shell. As soon as I walked out of the Oakwood, though, I could tell it was much colder than in the previous days, and the wind that Megan had warned me about had kicked in. So I went back and suited up. Good thing I stole that key. Besides seeing the goth girls in the park, one of my big goals for this trip was to see if there was any Japanese baseball going on. I know the season is over in October just like the Major Leagues, but I thought maybe there's a Winter League. Another of my big goals, and pretty much the last one, was to make it to Studio Ghibli. I found out there's a Ghibli Museum, which I'm guessing is an amusement park for kids. Getting tickets for Ghibli has proved to be quite the Sphinxian riddle. On the only website I found they say you can only buy them in other countries, not Japan. Which sounded pretty ridiculous if you ask me. And I would have had to pick them up at the Mitsuwa Market in Torrance where there's a JTD Travel office. But I almost did go get tickets in Torrance -- that's how much I wanna go. (By the way, I think I've been here too long -- the voice in my head is speaking with a Japanese accent. [JAH-POHN-EESE AHK-A-SCENT-UH] Or maybe I'm just tired.) I had called the number I had for JTD while here, and at first the woman on the phone -- who apparently learned English from an Australian tutor -- tried to sell me their 6000 yen package which includes an English guide, pick up and drop off. What, and miss out on navigating the train system? Hell no! But Kosaku told me there's a chain of convenience stores called Lawson Station that have machines that sell the tickets. The trick is finding someone to help you with the purchase since it's all in Japanese. So this morning I set out to find a Lawson's. The guy at the flower shop on the corner pointed me in the direction of the nearby sports facilities, so I just went that way. Aoyama
Besides the ritzy shops and fashionable dwellings, Aoyama has a huge amount of land set aside for sports facilities. If these places weren't built for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics I'd be surprised. There's a soccer stadium, baseball stadium, a rugby stadium named after a prince, some tennis courts, even a driving range for golf, all one after another.
I was studying how people were eating. I already knew that it's okay to make slurping sounds, and in fact the louder you are the more you show how much you like the ramen. My college roommate Yuji, from Japan, taught me that. (I'm still kicking myself that I lost his info. I keep hoping against all rational thought that I'll bump into him here.) But I wasn't studying the process of how to order -- I was just going to point to the picture menu outside. Turns out that you put your money in a machine before you get in line. Then you get a ticket which you hand to the female usher, who then calls out the order to the cooks. The machine was all in Japanese, so I still needed the usher to look at the menu with me, and then pick the right kanji. But since I wanted the cheapest one and the items were listed in order of price, I could have done it myself. I ended up sitting next to an Australian businessman who lives in Tokyo 3 weeks out of every month. (8 hours each way from Sydney. Ouch.) He was the one that told me I should have bought a ticket at the machine. He also told me that the hard boiled eggs on the counter are free. You just peel them and dunk them in the soup. Fun! I don't think I'd peeled a hard boiled egg since second grade, when my mom would send me off to school with love notes written on the eggs. The whole machine/ticket is remarkably efficient, as any place that's geared towards the lightening fast business lunch needs to be. But it would never work in the States. You don't tip in Japan, and in America they want to string you along in case you order anything else. Of course, the flip side is there's no reward system for good service. But everyone's so remarkably nice here that it's usually not a worry. Okay, I'm fucking beat. It's 3am and Mike's gonna be up at 6:30am. Oh happy day. Guess who's sleeping in? [The following was written six months later from notes.]
Ginza At that point I made my way to Ginza. I was still on the hunt for that infernal USB cable so I could download pictures off my camera and onto my laptop. But with Christmas fast approaching, I also had presents to procure. When I was nearing the end of my trip to Italy, I spent nearly a full day in Rome shopping, and I decided that I could do the same with this day. If you've got a place to keep your gift haul, it's best to just get all the shopping out of the way. And Ginza is, after all, the epicenter of shopping in Tokyo.
According to the plaque,
I was heading back to the Wako Building when I spotted a store that specialized in towels. As Megan had brought back some nice Muji towels from London, I thought it'd be nice to bring some nice soft woven towels from Tokyo. So I bought a set.
Sofmap reminded me a lot of Fry's. There was lots of techie stuff along with books, DVDs and software. But once again, I couldn't find my cable. So I bought another 256 MB SD card, which has turned out to be a pretty good investment. I also found some fun stocking stuffers, which you can see on this photo page.
Suehiro Tempura is a bit further past Boro and on the other side of the alley. I was drawn in by the lady that I could see through the small kitchen window. I slid back the traditional door, sat down at the small, 4-stool bar and was greeted by the owner, a woman who spoke English and who, though not overwhelmingly friendly, was fun to talk to. Eyeing the small, whole fried fishes on the counter, I told her I wasn't afraid and she could serve me anything. Though what she served wasn't all that adventurous, it was easily the best tempura I've ever had. The secret was in the dipping sauce. In the states it's always the same, thin stuff. But in this tempura house, there was a nice mix of cooked onion and perhaps some miso. It made all the difference. After my meal I set out for the Oakwood, burdened down with all the day's purchases. I headed back through the Forum plaza and made the mistake of entering the Tokyo Station on the JR side, when what I wanted was the subway. What followed was about a 20-minute long hell of a hike. As if my feet weren't killing me enough. It was exactly like one of the terminals at LAX in there. What I would have done for an electric sidewalk. The place was practically screaming for one! When I got home I called Magari, a guy who I had only talked to over the internet, but who nevertheless invited me to stay with him. Talking to him on the phone was strange at first as I don't know Japanese and he was struggling with English. Every time I asked him a question he would work out the translation out loud, and I wasn't sure if he was talking to me, himself or someone else. For a second I thought maybe he was a little crazy. But he turned out to be a delightful, if eccentric, guy. Later that night, Mike came back stinking drunk, and that was a lot of fun to see. He told me about getting treated to Kobe beef and drinking tons of whisky. He was apologetic about his sorry state the next day, but I enjoyed his enthusiasm -- nay, his zest for life. I gifted him my uneaten chestnuts, but I doubt he ever ate them, picky eater that he is. I also tried to give him the porno manga I bought, but he was freaked out about getting arrested at customs. So instead I gave him a plastic figurine of a Yomiuri Giants pitcher. After all, Mike is a San Francisco Giants fan. Determined to finally make it to a Lawson's to buy a ticket for the Ghibli Museum, I left around 11pm and walked around Aoyama. I had left my bag and camera behind for once, thinking I wouldn't be gone long. Along the way I started to think how familiar things looked, even though I didn't think I'd been to this part of the city yet. When I discovered the Lawson's, it turned out that I'd already been in that very store with the Santas on my second full day in Tokyo. Meaning that we could have bought our Ghibli tickets right there and then, and I could have been done with the Lawsons hunt. I also realized how close I was staying to Takeshita Street and Yoyogi Park. I'd had no idea. I went down into the subway, but after about five minutes, a station agent came down the steps with his arms in that tell-tale X formation, meaning that the trains had stopped running for the night. And indeed, the scant amount of people there started to leave, and I followed, feeling a bit dejected. So I tried making my way back, having a bit better sense of where I was. I asked everyone I saw on the street, "Bell Commons?" (BELL CAHM-MUN-SUH?) And they'd tell me to keep going. Along the way I saw something I kicked myself for not being able to take a picture of -- this store called Cowpoo! (I later went out of my way just to get the shot, feeling my trip would have been left unsuccessful without it.) Later, I stumbled upon this really, really nice sake house with beautiful pottery displayed in the window. As the pottery was for sale and I know how Megan loves nice dishes and bowls, it appeared that my day-long spending spree was not yet at an end. While looking at all the pottery, I found the weirdest thing under one of the bowls -- what looked like a tooth! It was like straight out of Totoro. I pocketed the tooth, and though I felt like I really should buy the piece that I found the tooth under, I instead came out of there with two bowls and a plate that I got at a discount because it had some damage on the bottom. (A couple of days later I smashed the "tooth" between my fingers and discovered it was a nut. Perhaps some sake-lovin' squirrel had hidden it there for later in the winter.) I finally got to Bell Commons and then the Oakwood. Exactly how I managed it in my exhausted state I have no idea.
email: ryan[at]monkeyduck[dot]com
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Communication: Have you seen the commercials for Gatorade X-Factor with all the sweaty athletes making X's with their arms? In those commercials, that formation with the arms indicates extreme flavor combinations. But in Japan, crossing your arms like that means "No". (The fact that I know this means that I had a lot of people telling me no in Japan). So watching that commercial for the first time was pretty funny. It was just a bunch of angry athletes covered in green and orange sweat emphatically indicating NO! NO!
Architecture: If you're like me and you love architecture, then you've got to check out the Tokyo International Forum. It's just around the corner from the JR Yurakucho stop near Ginza. The outside isn't all that impressive, but when you go inside and take the escalator down... I defy you not to be wowed.
Restaurants: Suehiro Tempura After you've seen the Tokyo Intl Forum, head for the small pedestrian alley underneath the Yurakucho JR station and you can't go wrong. There's plenty of cheap, good eats to choose from. It's got a real locals-only flavor. The place I discovered for myself was Suehiro Tempura, a great, simple tempura house. The proprietess speaks English and the food is excellent. I'm not sure of the name, but here's what the storefront looks like:
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